Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Palestinians defending the right to play soccer on the Temple Mount

This video from Palestine Times is upset at an Israeli Knesset member suggested that playing soccer on the Temple Mount be prohibited, and defends the right of Muslims to desecrate the holiest place in Judaism.

It is remarkable that the very people who insist that everyone else respect their customs to the extent that all must follow their own laws (e.g., no one can draw cartoons of Mohammed) and who threaten those who don't adhere to their standards, have so little respect for the feelings of others.

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03/21 Links Pt1: Knesset repeals 2005 act on West Bank settlement pullout; Biden Administration Pushing Arabs Towards Iran; Shin Bet busts Palestinian terror cell planning attack in Jerusalem

From Ian:

FDD: Israel and Palestinians Make Peace Commitments in Sharm el-Sheikh

“The good news is that there is an effort underway between Israelis and Palestinians to curb unrest during Ramadan. The bad news is that violent groups have been preparing to unleash terror attacks for some time now. And it’s difficult to say if any concrete commitments were made at the summit. Outside actors could have an outsized role in keeping a lid on the violence. Jordan’s rhetoric in particular could be a bellwether.”— Jonathan Schanzer, FDD Senior Vice President for Research Efforts to Calm Tension as Violence Soars

The meeting is the second round of talks that began in Aqaba, Jordan, on February 26. The conference aimed to agree on a viable solution to deescalate violence. Recent terror attacks inside Israel — including a March 6 roadside bombing — have exacerbated concerns by Israeli and American officials that terrorist groups will exploit Ramadan to carry out further attacks.

While the talks in Sharm el-Sheikh were proceeding, a Palestinian terrorist shot and injured a U.S.-Israeli citizen who was traveling in the West Bank city of Hawara. Israeli security forces apprehended the shooter, who had used a makeshift weapon during the terror attack. The attack occurred in the same city where a Palestinian terrorist shot and killed two Israelis three weeks ago, provoking retaliation by Israelis against homes and property in Hawara.

Mixed Messages
Prior to the talks, Hamas and other terrorist organizations issued statements urging the Palestinian Authority (PA) not to meet with Israel. The meeting “only serves the occupation’s agenda to consolidate its power and control over Palestinian land,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said. An unnamed PA official also expressed doubt, saying the chance of a successful outcome in Sharm el-Sheikh was “zero.” Still, an unnamed American official said the outcome of the talks was “constructive, honest and forthright.”

Knesset repeals 2005 act on West Bank settlement pullout

The Knesset on Tuesday voted 31-18 to repeal articles of the 2005 Gaza Disengagement Law banning Israelis from entering and residing in four communities in northern Samaria.

The Gaza disengagement led to the destruction and evacuation of the Israeli communities of Sa-Nur, Homesh, Ganim and Kadim in northern Samaria, as well as 21 communities in the Gaza Strip.

In addition to rolling back the articles (23-27) banning movement into and out of, and residence in, northern Samaria, the amendment stipulates that Article 28, which canceled rights regarding real estate in vacated territory, will not apply to rights established there starting from the date of the bill's approval.

"There is no longer any justification to prevent Israelis from entering and staying in the evacuated territory in northern Samaria, and therefore it is proposed to state that these sections [of the disengagement law] will no longer apply to the evacuated territory," reads the introductory text to the bill.

The bill's passage erases "to some extent" the "the stain on the garment of the State of Israel" left by the disengagement, it continues.

The IDF must now approve a military order allowing Israelis to return to those areas.

"Seventeen years of attempts, an uncompromising struggle, and a strong belief in the righteousness of this path converged into one moment when the Knesset plenum voted in favor of canceling the Disengagement Law," Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, who sponsored the bill, said Tuesday.

"The State of Israel tonight began the recovery process from the deportation disaster," he added in reference to the 2005 expulsion of some 8,000 Jews from their homes in Gaza and Samaria. "This is the first significant step towards real healing and settlement in Israel's historical territories that belong to it."

Khaled Abu Toameh: Biden Administration Pushing Arabs Towards Iran

Today, China is victorious by sponsoring the historic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, while the US has a new president who comes to destroy agreements reached by his predecessor, and even brags about it during his election campaign and his presidency." — Saeed Al-Mryti, Saudi political activist, Twitter, March 14, 2023.

"[N]o matter how hard analysts try to beautify the situation for US policy, what Saudi Arabia has done today is a direct and successful blow to the Biden administration and its policy in the Middle East." — Jubran Al-Khoury, Lebanese political analyst, annahar.com, March 12, 2023.

It is thus no surprise that Iran and its terror proxies – Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah – are expressing profound satisfaction over the Saudi-Iranian agreement. In their eyes, the agreement is an indication of the growing weakness of the US and the failed policy of the Biden administration in the Middle East. Thanks to the US administration's fragility, the Iranian-led axis of evil has been significantly emboldened as America's erstwhile Arab allies are rushing towards the open arms of the mullahs in Tehran.

A Hamas media spokesperson said today that Gaza's economy is rebounding now that there is relative calm in the sector.

Governmental data in the Gaza Strip released today "showed a remarkable improvement in the economic situation," especially in the manufacturing and export sectors, according to a report in Sama News.

The article says that the current state of calm, combined with Israel allowing an increasing number of vetted Gaza workers to commute to jobs in Israel, has helped the Gaza economy a great deal.

The head of the Hamas government media office, Salama Marouf, said that since last August, work has resumed in more than 220 textile factories, which led to the recovery of that sector after many years.

Speaking to Hamas' Al-Aqsa Radio, Marouf pointed out that during the past week, the products of some textile factories were exported and marketed abroad for the first time in years.

Last week, the Gaza government announced that there will be no problems of food shortages through Ramadan.

While there has been sporadic rocket fire over the past year, it has been very limited.

Who would have thought that there could be economic benefits for not being obsessed with killing Jews?

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A new study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue looks at the amount of antisemitic tweets before and after Elon Musk took over the company - and found that the amount of Jew-hate more than doubled:

New research from CASM Technology and ISD has found a major and sustained spike in antisemitic posts on Twitter since the company’s takeover by Elon Musk on October 27, 2022. Powered by the award-winning digital analysis technology Beam– and based on a powerful hate speech detection methodology combining over twenty leading machine-learning models– researchers found that the volume of English-language antisemitic Tweets more than doubled in the period following Musk’s takeover. In total, analysts detected 325,739 English-language antisemitic Tweets in the 9 months from June 2022 to February 2023, with the weekly average number of antisemitic Tweets increasing by 106% (from 6,204 to 12,762), when comparing the period before and after Musk’s acquisition.

There is a lot in the 32-page report, and its methodology appears to be largely sound. (I think if they would use my definition of antisemitism rather than the IHRA Working Definition, they might find it to be more accurate.)

But one statistic stood out to me: Antisemites were eager to take advantage of the apparent loss of moderation by creating new accounts at a much higher rate than before:

We identified a significant surge of new accounts posting plausibly antisemitic content. 3,855 such accounts were created between Oct 27 and Nov 6, an increase of 223% compared to the 11 days (the equivalent timespan) leading up to Oct 27.

To me, this indicates that much of the antisemitism on social media is not simply unintentional or naïve antisemitism. People go out of their way to not only post antisemitic content but to create new accounts dedicated to hate.

I would be interested in finding out if there was a similar surge in new accounts dedicated to racist, anti-Asian, homophobic or misogynist tweets in that time period. I'm sure there was an increase - if for no other reason than that antisemites have other targets of their hate - but I have a feeling that the antisemites are far more activist and willing to take the extra effort to showcase their hate than other bigots

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The Alqasem family: a perfect example of Arab colonialists who pretend to be anticolonialist

One of the people who tried to troll me recently is Karen Alqasem, an American whose daughter Lara who made headline a few years ago for being briefly blocked from studying at Hebrew University for her BDS activities. Her father is a raging antisemite, Karen supports murdering Jews and then tried to lecture me on morality.

For fun, I looked at Karen's recent tweets, and this one caught my eye:

Well, since she claims that the Al Qasem family has more history in the land than the Jews, I decided to look up their family tree.

Multiple accounts of their family history are most intriguing.

Of course, the Al Qasems don't originate in the Levant.

Everyone agrees that they began as a tribe in Arabia. They then spread all over, and today you can find them from Morocco to Lebanon to Syria and Bahrain.

But they didn't just spread - they conquered.

The Al Qasem tribe was instrumental in the Arab conquest of the Levant, Egypt and North Africa/Maghreb.

They were colonialists!

The Qasems helped lead the colonial Muslim Arab conquests of non-Arab territories and turned them into Arab regions.

But their family history articles claim, incredibly, that they fought against colonialism! "Individuals and groups associated with the Al-Qasim family participated in the struggle against colonialism and the conquest of Egypt, the Levant and Morocco," says their family biography.

Talk about projection! She is claiming that Jews are the colonialists, when the truth is that the Al Qasem family are the paradigms of colonialism!

And what about Karen herself, who married into the Alqasem family and now claims to have more history in Israel than someone whose family lived in Hebron for centuries?

Oh, she's Welsh.

Yes - she really is a white European who pretends to be indigenous to the Middle East while claiming Jews who have lived there and kept a connection to the Land for millennia are the white European colonizers.

You can't make this up.

(h/t kweansmom)

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03/20 Links Pt2: Toulouse and the birth of modern jihadism; Wikipedia Editors Deliberately Distorted Holocaust Articles; Israel ranked fourth happiest country in world

From Ian:

Toulouse and the birth of modern jihadism

When two young men embellish a Toulouse FC replica shirt with the name of the city’s most notorious mass murderer, is it just a sick and provocative gag, or evidence of sympathy for the killer’s worldview? Earlier this month, the French courts decided it was “terrorism apologia” and handed out three and four-month sentences to two men who, posted a photo on Snapchat wearing a football shirt with the name of the delinquent jihadist, Mohammed Merah, across it, with the number seven — for the number he killed.

Mohammed Merah began his rampage in Toulouse on March 11, 2012, first executing a French-Moroccan paratrooper who nobly refused an order to lie down. He struck again on March 15, firing on three soldiers in Montauban — two were killed and another left paralysed. The murdered soldiers were all of North African Muslim descent. Then, on March 19, Merah pulled up outside the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school. In the schoolyard, he gunned down a Rabbi before executing the man’s three and five-year-old sons as they tried to crawl to safety. He then entered the school and grabbed an eight-year-old girl, at which point his gun jammed. Unperturbed, he swapped weapons and shot her. He filmed it all. After a manhunt and lengthy standoff, Merah was shot dead by police at his apartment.

Even considering the usual moral squalor of jihadist violence, Merah’s spree stands out for its depravity. Yet, for some reason, he is still widely revered. Nicole Yardeni, a deputy mayor in the city, tells me that his name is sometimes viewed positively even outside of jihadist circles, as “a symbol of rebellion” against society. After all, Merah is the man “who brought France to its knees”, as one local youth reminded the mother of his first victim. Even at the time of the police manhunt and siege, Facebook posts and pages honouring the gunman attracted thousands of likes, while police prevented people from laying flowers at his apartment. (It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority, Muslim and non-Muslim, were horrified.)

Within Salafi-jihadist circles, Merah’s cold-blooded rampage made him an icon. At the time of his attack a petty criminal, 28-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche, was killing time in a prison cell. Ordinarily, he would have refused to watch infidel television, but this time he asked his guards for a TV set so he could jubilantly follow the Merah manhunt live. Nemmouche would later head for Syria where he became a jailer for Islamic State. Chillingly, he told a captive that, like Merah, he “dreamed of grabbing a Jewish girl by the hair and shooting her dead”. Nemmouche would go on to deliberately target and murder Jews, killing four at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in 2014. It was Europe’s first attack by an Isis returnee.

Wikipedia Editors Deliberately Distorted Holocaust Articles

For over a decade, a group of nefarious editors has been distorting Holocaust entries.

If you’ve used Wikipedia to research the Holocaust, you may be a victim of a group of self-appointed “editors” who have been deliberately warping Wikipedia’s Holocaust articles for years.

For the last ten years, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia whitewashing the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolstering stereotypes about Jews,” explains Shira Klein, an associate professor of history at Chapman University in California, who’s tracked this gang’s insidious activities.

Due to this group’s zealous handiwork,” explains University of Ottawa professor Jan Grabowski, who collaborated with Dr. Klein, “Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles, blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.”

Drs. Klein and Grabowski spent many months pouring over Wikipedia articles, checking facts, and scrutinizing editors’ work and the sources they used. They published their shocking conclusions in an article titled “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust” in The Journal of Holocaust Research. Their article went viral, garnering tens of thousands of views in an academic field in which that sort of exposure is unheard of.

Wikipedia itself stepped in. In an unprecedented move, the website’s Arbitration Committee, known internally as ArbCom, has initiated an internal review; they’ve announced their intention to publish their findings within weeks.

Bassem Eid: GWU academic's antisemitism isn't helping Palestinians like me

With the Palestinian people, our whole identity is often assumed to be bound up with the anti-Western, violent ideology promulgated by Yasser Arafat and his proteges. George Washington University professor Lara Sheehi is just the latest example of this violent misrepresentation, which gives my people a bad name. On her now-deleted Twitter account, she frequently showed her hateful bias against Israelis and repeatedly condoned violence against them.

This past semester, she used her mandatory diversity course to spread such dangerous views and actively discriminated against Jewish students in her class. When the students complained to school authorities, Sheehi counterclaimed that the students were exhibiting "Islamophobia" against her.

Sheehi also verbally attacked a student for speaking about terrorist attacks in Israel, which have killed civilians, including American citizens. Her claim was that the student's use of the phrase "terrorist attack" invoked Islamophobia, even though the student never mentioned Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims.

Sheehi and her fellow antisemitic haters do not speak for me or for the many Palestinians who desire peace and coexistence with our neighbor, Israel. Hatred and radicalism harm Palestinians and do nothing to advance our cause. Sheehi's actions do not and should not represent the Palestinian people, the good men and women I know who respect our neighbors and wish for an end to these endless cycles of violence.

We see how peace, economic opportunity, and cooperation benefit both Palestinians and Israelis, just as the normalization of political and economic cooperation with Israel has brought tremendous advantages to countries such as the United Arab Emirates. This is what most Palestinians want, too.

Violent, hateful rhetoric rejecting the aspirations and experiences of Israelis may get headlines, but it does not represent the majority of Palestinians, who know that peace is the path to a better life for ourselves and our children. When radical actors preach hate and violence, it inevitably leads to violent incidents that only worsen matters and trap us in an escalating cycle.

Palestinians are Philistines, Canaanites, Jebusites, Arabs, and now Philistines again!

Ibrahim Abrash, writing in Palestinian news site Amad, says that Bezalel Smotrich is ignoring the Jewish Scripture when he says there were no such thing as the Palestinian people.

Because look at the many times that the Torah mentions Philistines and the Land of the Philistines!

It's been a while since Palestinians claimed to be Philistines. It was a common claim at the UN in the 1940s, when the Syrian representative stated, "The Palestinian Arabs are the descendants of the same inhabitants of that country of forty centuries ago who fought in the first campaign which the Jews waged against Palestine in the fifteenth century before Christ. In the Bible, they are called the Philistines. After about the thirteenth century, they adopted the Arabic language, which was later replaced by the Syrian language, a language closely related to the former. These people have not changed. They are the same people who were living there then. They have been there for forty centuries--since prehistoric times."

(Note his backhanded way of saying that Palestine is really a part of Greater Syria.)

The claim that Palestinians were Syrians became less popular as the term "philistine" in English is equated with narrow-mindedness and being uncultured.

The obvious next move was for Palestinians to claim to be Canaanites, because that way they can say that the Jews ethically cleansed them twice, and Canaanites were definitely in the bulk of the Land of Israel before the Jews.

But when Jerusalem became an issue, Palestinians suddenly became Jebusites, a people who have no independent known history outside the Torah. But they lived around Jerusalem, so therefore Palestinians must have been Jebusites.

Of course, the same Bible that says Jebusites existed says that they legally sold Jerusalem to King David.

Notice that there is never the slightest bit of historical, scientific, linguistic or cultural evidence for these contradictory and supposedly unbroken histories of Palestinians.

So now we are back to Philistines, since that is the most convenient lie for the current threat.

Any lie will do, as long as they counter Jews' claims.

Which reminds me of a recent comic of mine:

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The bizarre maps erasing Israel in Jordan's geography textbooks

Jordan complained that Bezalel Smotrich stood behind a map showing Jordan as part of the Jewish state under the original definition of Palestine before Sykes-Picot. They were quite insulted.

So I looked at the Jordanian geography textbooks, and saw plenty of maps (not all of them) that erased Israel, like this one:

But this map in a seventh grade geography book from 2019 has nothing to do with reality.

From left to right, the first one is captioned "1946."

The second one shows the 1947 UN partition plan that was never accepted by anyone, and the caption is "1949-1967."

The third shows the Green Line created in 1949, and is captioned "2008."

The key shows green as "Arab lands" and the white as "occupied lands."

According to this textbook, all of Israel is "occupied," and somehow in 1967 Israel occupied the lands it gained in 1948. (As far as I can tell, Israel isn't mentioned.)

If Jordan is going to complain about Smotrich's map, they should explain maps like these.

(h/t Yoel)

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03/20 Links Pt1: The protest movement can’t unravel the thread of Israel’s unique tapestry; Tel Aviv terror victim Or Eshkar succumbs to wounds; Israel's Targeted Counter-Terror Raids Contrast with Wanton Palestinian Attacks

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: The protest movement can’t unravel the thread of Israel’s unique tapestry

Observers at home and abroad of the current crisis fear—or hope—that Israel is headed for a full-fledged civil war. Hearing members of Israel’s military and other security forces join the fray by announcing their refusal to fulfill their duties causes them to consider this a real possibility; watching thousands of Israelis march to the beat of former prime ministers and defense officials calling on foreign governments to censure Netanyahu will do that.

What the ill-wishers purposely obfuscate, and the pearl-clutchers don’t take into account, is the way in which average citizens are going about their daily lives behind the lens of TV news cameras. This is certainly true of citizens who have little interest in and no clue about how the branches of government operate. But even activists are hard to discern at supermarket check-out lines and bus stops.

On Thursday night, for instance, as the so-called “Day of Resistance” came to a close, every trendy restaurant, bar and nightclub in the White City was packed to the brim with millennials eating, drinking and making merry. When I pointed this out to a friend, she quipped: “All that demonstrating must have made them hungry and thirsty.”

It’s unclear, though, whether this particular crowd—munching happily on shrimp and pork—had taken part in the protests at all. In fact, according to a recent Direct Polls survey, the civil “unrest” is populated mainly by silver-haired boomers. You know, the ones who think they’re at Woodstock or something.

In a lopsided debate (what else is new?) with two left-wingers, I cited this example of the “life goes on” resilience that’s characteristic of Israelis in the face of adversity. Their response was that the people I was referring to won’t be able to be out enjoying themselves, and certainly not in non-kosher establishments, if the government clips the wings of the Supreme Court.

Sigh.

“Ok,” I said. “So, you and the rest of the protesters can try to change the situation during the next elections.”

Their humorless answer was hilarious. If the judicial reforms proceed, they argued, elections will be banned.

It was a ludicrous pronouncement that Opposition leader Yair Lapid had made several days earlier. It’s baseless hype that he and the pundits parroting him know to be nonsense.

Despite the damage they’re doing to Israel’s standing and security, the one thing they won’t be able to shake is the underlying health of a society that cares deeply about preserving Judaism, Zionism and—yes—popular culture. Faith in this unique blend, which the over-reaching judiciary has been attempting to dilute, is what the majority reasserted at the ballot box on Nov. 1.

Voters must not be bullied into forgetting it. It’s no accident, after all, that Israel just ranked No. 4 in the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network report on world happiness.

Lapid: I believe High Court will rule against law that gives coalition control of justices; not sure we’ll still have a country on 75th anniversary

At a faction meeting of his Yesh Atid party in the Knesset, opposition leader Yair Lapid decries the coalition’s fast-moving “hostile takeover of the judicial system.”

Regarding the coalition’s updated legislation that gives it the right to fill the first two empty High Court justice seats in each Knesset session, and heavy sway over any after the first two, Lapid notes: “If they control the justices, there is no separation of powers. There is no independent judiciary. Israel is not a democracy.”

If the law passes, as the coalition vowed late Sunday would happen before the Knesset’s Passover recess, “we’ll go to the High Court,” Lapid says.

“If it passes, Israel stops being a democracy. We won’t let this happen. The liberal camp simply will not live in an Israel that is not a democracy. Hundreds of thousands of patriots will continue to take to the streets.”

He says the opposition is prepared to debate judicial reform on the basis of President Herzog’s alternative proposal.

“If the coalition wants to stop the destruction of the economy, the harm to security, the collapse of Israel’s international standing,” and the internal rift, Lapid says, it must stop the legislation. “Then we can talk — about a constitution based on the Declaration of Independence.”

Netanyahu, Biden discuss Huwara shooting, judicial reform, Iran threat

With respect to the Israeli government’s effort to reform the judiciary, Biden “underscored his belief that democratic values have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship, that democratic societies are strengthened by genuine checks and balances, and that fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support,” said the statement.

He furthermore offered support “for efforts underway to forge a compromise on proposed judicial reforms consistent with those core principles,” it added.

For his part, Netanyahu told the American president that “Israel was, and will remain, a strong and vibrant democracy.”

Finally, Biden expressed his “unwavering commitment to Israel’s security and the ongoing cooperation between [U.S. and Israeli] national security teams, including to counter all threats posed by Iran.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency recently confirmed in a report that its inspectors had found particles of uranium enriched to 83.7 percent at Iran’s underground nuclear site in Fordow.

In response, Netanyahu said that history has shown that in the absence of a credible military threat or actual military action, Iran will become a nuclear power.

“The longer you wait, the harder that becomes [to prevent]. We’ve waited very long. I can tell you that I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That is not merely an Israeli interest; it’s an American interest; it’s in the interest of the entire world,” he said.

During their call, Netanyahu thanked Biden for his commitment to upholding Israel’s security.

The leaders agreed to stay in regular contact over the coming weeks.

Biden Lectures Netanyahu on Judicial Reform — After Launching His Own Court-Packing Commission

President Joe Biden has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against pursuing judicial reform — after his own administration considered a radical proposal to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices.

The Times of Israel reports that Biden “raised his concerns with the judicial overhaul being advanced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government during a ‘candid and constructive’ phone call” on Sunday.

The article fails to note that Biden entertained his own, far more radical, proposals to change the U.S. judiciary after Democrats grew irate at the increasingly conservative composition of the Supreme Court after 2018.

For months, Democratic Party presidential candidates pushed proposals to “pack” the Supreme Court by adding four extra seats, then having the president nominate left-wing justices whom the Senate would confirm.

Biden dropped his former objections to such ideas and promised to consider them. He appointed a commission to consider the idea of court-packing, among other reforms, and it delivered its draft final report in 2021.

The commission warned that the benefits of packing the court were “uncertain.” However, Democrats — led by then-House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) — had already introduced legislation on the idea.

Ironically, Nadler has led Democrats in objecting to Israel’s judicial reforms. (He was joined by Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, who claims to be pro-Israel when campaigning among Jewish constituents in his district.)

The Palestinian Safa news agency is alarmed.

In conjunction with the escalation of the Israeli attacks on the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, an extremist Jewish organization affiliated with the alleged "Temple groups" launched tourist "guided tours" for English-speaking intruders, in order to introduce them to the mosque, as the "Temple", in a dangerous precedent that is the first of its kind.

The "Beyadenu" organization, or what is known as "The Temple Mount in Our Hands", launched its first guided tour inside Al-Aqsa, in cooperation with the "Return to the Temple Mount" organization, which announced that this tour will be organized monthly for the English-speaking community in order to "connect with the Temple Mount." .

The occupation seeks, behind these "tourist tours", to perpetuate the Jewish presence in Al-Aqsa Mosque, falsify and Judaize Arab and Islamic history in it, as well as impose spatial and temporal division.

The Waqf categorically rejects these dangerous measures, which affect the sanctity of Al-Aqsa, saying: "Extremists are waging a new war on Al-Aqsa, with the aim of brainwashing its visitors, inciting against Muslims and Palestinians, and promoting the Talmudic narrative that contradicts our Quranic narrative, which leads to an imbalance in the mosque."

They warn of the danger of such tours and guidance programs, which are among the most dangerous Judaization programs, which will lead to an attempt to create a new reality in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The tourist guidance is a prerogative of the Waqf Department, and the occupation has no right to encroach and interfere in its affairs and management of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Whew! Jews telling the truth about the Temple Mount really gets these Palestinian Muslims upset!

You can see the Beyadenu website here, to help arrange your own English language tour of the most sacred spot in Judaism.

It has been ten years since I had my own personal English-language tour of the Temple Mount, provided by Yisrael Medad, and it still holds up:

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Smotrich is right - there were no Arabs who identified as Palestinian a century ago (update: few)

From Times of Israel:

Far-right lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday that the Palestinian people were “an invention” from the past century and that people like himself and his grandparents were the “real Palestinians.”

Speaking in Paris... Smotrich said there was “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people,” a comment that was met with applause and cheers from attendees, as seen in a video from the event posted online.

“Do you know who are the Palestinians?” asked the head of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party and Israel’s finance minister. “I’m Palestinian,” he said, also mentioning his grandmother who was born in the northern Israeli town of Metula 100 years ago, and his grandfather, a 13th-generation Jerusalemite as the “real Palestinians.”

We've discussed this topic many times before, and Smotrich is correct. Palestinian identity is a response to Zionism. Palestinian "culture" is a modern invention, and one that is explicitly political.

Here's an Ottoman map of the region from a 1913 work "Jughrafiya-i Osmani" that doesn't even say Palestine.

Even though there was no subdistrict of the Ottoman Empire known as "Palestine," one would expect every map to at least mention it if it was so important.

But there is another piece of evidence that shows that there was no historic Palestinian people - and that is their surnames.

Even among Palestinians, you can see lots of surnames that show where they originated - al-Masri from Egypt, al-Sham from Syria, al-Hindi from India, al-Mughrabi from Morocco, al-Turki, al-Yamani, and dozens of others.

Have you ever heard of anyone with the name al-Filastini?

I think I may have seen it once or twice, but it is exceedingly rare. Looking through Facebook, I see lots of people who claim that name but they all seem to be pseudonyms - I couldn't find one who listed a relative with the same name. I certainly cannot find anyone with that name in old newspapers or books.

This indicates that even as Arabs would happily take on the names of the cities or even regions they were from (like al-Haurani from the Hauran region of Syria) essentially no one ever thought of themselves as "Palestinian." Nabulsi from Nablus, sure - but Filastini? Essentially no one.

No one can rewrite the history of their family surnames. And when we see so many Arabic surnames that proudly describe where they came from, and practically none say "Filastini," you know that nearly none identified as Palestinian.

UPDATE: I should say "few." Zachary Foster has traced the beginnings of the term Palestinians to refer to the Arabs of Palestine in Arabic and he finds they began at the turn of the twentieth century, largely but not only as a response to Zionism. (h/.t Yoel)

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This interview of one of the German victims of a near-lynching in Nablus when they drove a rideshare car with an Israeli flag has an interesting implication:

I did not know if I would go out alive, because they had so much hate against us....Suddenly they came our of taxis and kind of surrounded us, and we tried to explain in English that we are tourists, we are from Germany, we are both not Jewish so we are not a target for them."

I can't really blame them for saying whatever they needed to in order to save their lives, but I cannot help but think that there is an implication that it is somehow more tragic to kill an innocent German non-Jew than to kill a Jew.

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Even the most "moderate" Palestinians support shooting Jewish civilians

The shooting of David Stern as he drove with his family today resulted, as always, with great celebrations by Palestinians.

Here a crowd goes to his house to celebrate.

And here are the obligatory fireworks celebrating the shooting of a Jew.

But, you may say, these are only the extremists. Certainly normal, sober Palestinians support shooting random Jewish civilians.

Well, Muhammed Shehada - who has bylines in Haaretz, Newsweek, Vice and elsewhere, and is a columnist for the Forward, and who also has a job working for a "human rights" NGO - went out of his way to justify Stern being shot twenty times:

The settler wounded in today's shooting near Huwara is David Stern, a former US Marine soldier who provides combat & weapon training to #Israeli settlers.

He's Israeli-American & lives in the Itamar settlement, built on land confiscated from 5 Palestinian villages.

Under international law, Stern is a civilian. His job and where he lives does not affect that designation. So this celebrated writer who pretends to be a human rights professional is justifying a war crime.

And he is considered moderate enough to write for Jewish-owned media.

If this is the best example of morality from Palestinian society, then Palestinian society is rotten to the core.

(h/t Adam Albilya)

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03/19 Links: Terror attack: American-Israelis injured in shooting near Huwara; The Iran-led ‘axis of resistance’ is gearing up for a Ramadan terror offensive

From Ian:

Terror attack: American-Israelis injured in shooting near Huwara

David Stern, an oleh from the US, was injured in a shooting attack near Huwara in the northern West Bank on Sunday afternoon, just three weeks after two Israelis were killed in a shooting attack in the Palestinian town.

Stern, a resident of the settlement Itamar and a former US marine, was transferred to Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva in moderate to serious condition. His wife, also a US citizen, was injured lightly in the attack as well.

After being shot, Stern succeeded in shooting back at the terrorist, injuring him. A soldier at the scene also shot the terrorist at the same time. The terrorist ran away, but was located shortly after by Israeli forces.

The terrorist was identified as Laith Nadim Nassar, a resident of the village of Madama, southwest of Nablus, according to Palestinian media.

A photo reportedly from the scene showed a vehicle with Israeli license plates with bullet holes in the windshield near the driver's seat. About 20 bullets were fired at the car, according to initial reports.

A senior Magen David Adom medic, Moshe Meir Shimon, who was present at the scene stated "We met up with the vehicle at the Einabus junction along with IDF medical personnel. We provided medical treatment to a man in his 30s who was seriously injured by a gunshot to his upper body and to a woman who fainted from anxiety. We quickly transferred them to ambulances and evacuated them to the hospital, as the man was in serious condition."

Israeli and Palestinian reactions to the terrorist attack in Huwara
"I've known the injured man for man years. He's a dear friend, a professional fighter and level-headed," Religious Zionist Party MK Tzvi Sukkot said in a statement.

"After a direct attack, he managed to return fire, hit the terrorist and take care of himself. A miracle has happened here!"

The Iran-led ‘axis of resistance’ is gearing up for a Ramadan terror offensive

According to security sources, Hezbollah Secretary-General Nasrallah increased his coordination meetings in Beirut’s al-Dahiya neighborhood with PIJ secretary general Ziad al-Nakhala and Hamas military chief Saleh al-Arouri, toward the beginning of Ramadan. An agreement was reportedly reached between Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ00 and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to step up terrorist activities in the coming days.

Nasrallah said last week that Israel would collapse even before it marks the 80th year of its founding. The internal dispute in Israel and the wave of protests over the government’s judicial reform have increased the feeling among the terrorist organizations that Israel is on the verge of disintegration and that this is the time to increase the pressure.

Despite the hoopla at the time, the agreement regarding the division of Lebanon’s economic territorial waters designed by the United States, signed on October 27, 2022, did not reduce Hezbollah’s motivation for terrorism against Israel. Moreover, it allows Hamas to strengthen its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon and in the refugee camps in Tyre and Sidon.

Hamas officials say that the attacks on Israel in the coming days will be from all directions according to the doctrine of unification of the fronts, including rocket fire from southern Lebanon and infiltration operations from southern Lebanon into Israeli territory.

According to security officials in Israel, behind all this malevolent activity is Iran, which in the past year has smuggled arms and funds through Jordan to the northern West Bank into the hands of the terrorist organizations.

The axis of resistance led by Iran is preparing for a major escalation in the month of Ramadan. Israel is also seriously preparing for a scenario that may be bigger than the military conflict that took place in May 2021.

The Great Big Palestinian Brainwash: Why Children Are Turning Toward Terrorism

There is an issue with indoctrination in Palestinian society.

Scores of children are being taught by both their teachers and educational materials that Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth and that they should seek “martyrdom” by perpetrating deadly terror attacks against Israelis and Jews to do this.

And despite the problem being well documented — including pieces by HonestReporting — little has been done to tackle it.

According to the latest report by IMPACT-se, a non-profit watchdog group that monitors educational resources for extremist materials, and the non-governmental organization UN Watch, the extremist issue in UNRWA schools persists despite the UN refugee agency pledging to get to grips with it.

The most damning findings documented in the report include:
Numerous teachers whose social media accounts were awash with praise for terrorists who had perpetrated deadly attacks on innocent Israelis and Jews
One teacher shared Hamas propaganda videos that threaten the destruction of Israel and wrote tweets praising the proscribed terrorist organization
A teacher who liked posts praising the Jerusalem synagogue axe and shooting attack in which five Jewish worshipers and a Druze police officer were murdered
A teacher who wrote posts encouraging Palestinian children to commit attacks, labeling one such boy a “righteous hero”
An elementary school teacher who wrote antisemitic conspiracies online, including that “wealthy Jews… lead the world from behind”
A teacher who wrote social media posts venerating Adolf Hitler and Nazism, with one comment calling on Hitler to wake up because “there are still some people you need to burn” (three fellow UNRWA employees ‘liked’ this particular post)
Children taught in classrooms to lionize notable Palestinian terrorists, including Dalal Mughrabi, who was behind the 1978 Coastal Road massacre that left 38 civilians dead
Youngsters being encouraged to “liberate” the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which amounts to a clarion call for violence at the flashpoint site
Terrorists are portrayed in schoolbooks as heroes with explicit calls for children to follow in their footsteps
Exercises in school materials that celebrate a firebombing attack on a Jewish bus as a “barbecue party”
Schoolbooks that call on pupils to take up arms against Israel and murder Jews
Materials that promote anti-Jewish blood libels and falsely claim Israel is stealing Palestinian antiquities

and the problem is likely not confined to UNRWA-administered schools.

Times of Israel reports:

Israeli and Palestinian officials meet in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in a bid to ease tensions between the sides and rein in a spiral of violence ahead of the upcoming holiday overlap of Ramadan and Passover.

The meeting comes a few weeks after the delegations met in Aqaba, Jordan, shepherded by regional allies Egypt and Jordan as well as the US, aiming to end a spike in violence in recent months.

Whatever progress emerged out of the previous meeting in Jordan late last month, which ended with pledges to deescalate tensions, was quickly derailed when a new burst of violence erupted on the same day. A Palestinian gunman shot and killed two Israeli brothers in Huwara, whereupon Jewish settlers rampaged in the Palestinian town, setting homes and cars on fire.

Palestinian militias are insulting the Palestinian Authority for attending.

Hamas officials called it a "disgrace" to attend the meeting and Hamas issued a statement condemning the meeting.

Islamic Jihad called for more terror during Ramadan, which starts this week.

Fatah responded to these criticisms saying that attending the conference shows courage.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Israel has stopped all arrest operations in the territories for the past two days to try to calm things down before the conference. It also didn't respond to a rocket shot from Gaza at Israel last night.

If the last conference in Aqaba is any indication, the terrorists might be redoubling their efforts for terror attacks today.

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